But despite those rising poll numbers, the only woman running on
the Republican side may be left off of the debate stage again
next month.

CNN, which is hosting the next debate, weighs heavily polls
released before the first Republican debate, when Fiorina was
polling around 1%.

The network released rules several months ago announcing that it
would average the results of qualifying polls conducted between
July 16 and September 10. That average is set to determine the 10
candidates who get to be on the main stage.

The problem for Fiorina is that nine of these polls were
conducted before the first debate,
according to her campaign, and only two were done since then.

Fiorina was also excluded during the first main, prime-time
debate on August 6. However, she was widely heralded for her
strong performance in the "happy hour" debate that hosted the
second-tier candidates.

In a
new Quinnipiac University poll on Thursday, Fiorina grabbed
5% of the vote, putting her eighth. She also significantly
increased her support in several early-primary states: A Public
Policy Polling poll found her in third among New Hampshire
Republican primary voters, and a Monmouth University poll out
this week reported her in fourth in South Carolina.

Fiorina isn't content to simply let the snub slide, however, and
her campaign is starting to jab hard at CNN and the Republican
National Committee.

"Using all these polls from before August 6 is a little bit like
keeping a football team out of the playoffs because of a
preseason game," Fiorina
said in a Fox News interview Thursday night. "I guess I don't
understand why media companies are deciding who Republican
primary voters hear from, honestly."

The
(all male) lineup of the first prime-time
debate.Thomson
Reuters

Earlier in the week, Fiorina's campaign slammed CNN and the
RNC, accusing both of them of "putting their thumb on the scale."

"If the RNC won’t tell CNN to treat post-debate polling
consistently with pre-debate polling, they are putting their
thumb on the scale," Fiorina spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said
in a press release.

Flores ratcheted up the attack even further during a Thursday
interview on Fox Business.

"This is the status quo trying to protect the status quo, trying
to protect their power, their prestige, and so they want the same
people on the stage as before, and they've set up a system that
will do that,"
Flores said.

The Fiorina campaign also took issue with CNN using national
polls instead of surveys of the early-primary states to determine
which candidates to include.

"It's frustrating, to say the least," Fiorina said in
yet another Fox interview on Friday. "I'm also comfortably in
the top five in virtually every statewide poll that has been
taken since that [first] debate — and there have been many. And
of course we have statewide primaries, not national primaries."

CNN and the RNC have both defended their methodology, saying that
the candidates knew the terms of the debate months ago.

"All the candidates are well aware that, by law, the media set
the criteria," the RNC's communications director, Sean Spicer,
told Politico. "Candidates — including the Fiorina campaign —
had asked that the criteria be well-known before the process. CNN
had made the criteria known four months ago."

Fiorina has still benefited from the debates thus far, even if
she was excluded from the main show. She's drawing larger crowds
at events, and her super PAC confirmed that the lower-tier "happy
hour" debate helped boost fundraising for the super PAC
supporting her candidacy.

"We're seeing that with increased fundraising, web traffic, and
across-the-board excitement," Carly for America Communications
Director Katie Hughes said in an email.

A source close to the campaign framed the fundraising in much
more blunt terms.

"I think they’re drinking from a fire hose right now," a source
told Business Insider.

Many critics had
complaints about how the first debate, hosted by Fox News,
selected its participants as well.

Polling experts pointed out that the Fox model — which weighted
several early polls — was too heavily indebted to name
recognition and media coverage that benefited higher-profile
candidates. Some experts suggested that the only way to curb the
influence of polling bias is to ditch the strict criteria and
hold two debates with a random shuffle of candidates in each.